


The House You Live In

by Aliset



Series: A Universe Next Door [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Astrology, But not like you're thinking, Domestic Avengers, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Happy Steve Bingo, M/M, SO MUCH FLUFF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 05:18:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16079237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aliset/pseuds/Aliset
Summary: In which Steve finds a house in Wakanda. Written for my Happy Steve Bingo card and the prompt of "astrologer."





	The House You Live In

The house, as such, wasn’t much. It was the color of the rusty Wakandan earth and part of the roof was domed while the door was a brilliant blue. The blue of the sea, or Steve’s eyes, Bucky would have said, if he’d been the first one to see the door. But he wasn’t---Steve was---so the blue made him think instead of summer sunlight on water, or Bucky’s eyes just as night was beginning to fall. 

“There’s three bedrooms, a good sized kitchen, a garden off the kitchen and a large enough enclosure for Bucky’s goats,” Shuri was saying as she led him through the property. “It’ll need some work but,” and she smiled mysteriously, “not nearly as much as it looks like it does, from the outside.”

Steve understood then that this house was one of many constructed to look primitive, built during the years when such houses were a vital part of the national camouflage. “Did you see the studio out behind?” Shuri asked.

“There’s a studio?” Steve responded, following her around to a smaller outbuilding connected to the main house by a fabric archway, faded and torn and needing repair. 

“Yes,” Shuri said. “Mama’s cousin was an artist. When he died, his only son returned the property to Mama’s control.”

It was difficult to remember that “Mama” was Queen Mother Ramonda, an entirely impressive and intimidating presence in her own right who had, for reasons of her own, decided to grant this property to two of the strangers her son had given asylum not long before. “Shuri, she won’t mind? Truly?”

“Have you met our mother?” Shuri asked dryly. “This was her idea, never doubt it. Baba always said she knew her mind first and best before anyone else. The property has been vacant for almost ten years, aside from the caretakers and the routine security checks. No one else would dare live here without Mama’s permission. And she wants, very much, to have the property go to you and James, that you may pass it on in your time.”

Steve had done some research, and he knew enough to know that Wakandan attitudes towards property were not exactly the same as Western ones. No money would change hands, nor would there be any long meetings in lawyers’ offices. Property didn’t belong to a person but to a clan or, in rarer cases, a family. T’Challa had quietly granted them all citizenship a few months before, but giving them land? A place to call home? That was something else, even if his mother had been behind the whole idea. 

And while he and Bucky and the others had begun to make a life here, it was a long way off from accepting land that could be taken away from them at any moment (he heard the ghosts of Sarah’s whispered stories, talking of the clearances her mother had endured, croft and farm and home all burned and gone at the whim of powerful men.) 

Shuri touched his arm lightly, and Steve was struck again by how much older she was, in ways that had nothing to do with chronological years. Change had brought much good to Wakanda, but also some bad. Shuri had learned to weather both with grace and dignity. “What concerns you?”

“I never owned a place. My mam never owned her place. And her mother before her. Same with Bucky’s ma and dad. This is something our families never had and you’ll just give it to us?”

“Well, there are some… requirements,” Shuri told him. “Mama will want the property kept in good condition. Oh, and there’s the matter of the astrologer.”

Steve blinked. “The astrologer?”

***

The astrologer was not at all what Steve had expected. She tiny, barely coming up to his shoulder, unlike the usual run of Wakandan women who looked as if they could possibly break him into two. She also laughed when she saw him---“Shuri, you never said he was this cute!” 

“You’ll have to forgive Anathi,” Shuri said with a dry smile. “She’s a---”

“The term would be ‘astrologer’ in your language,” Anathi said in a musical Wakandan accent. She gestured them to a couple of empty chairs, carved simply in the Wakandan aesthetic tradition. “How familiar are you with our religious traditions here?”

“I’m as familiar as I’ve been encouraged to be,” Steve said diplomatically, and it was true. Wakandan religion seemed to run the gamut between deeply devout to a certain subset who chose not to believe at all. In either case, religion was held to be a deeply personal matter and not one discussed freely or openly. 

Anathi nodded as if she’d expected nothing less. “Then I will explain my role. Have you ever had a day in which nothing went right, from the time you got out of bed? Where everything seemed at cross-purposes to what you needed or wanted to do?”

Steve could think of several days just like that---most of 2012, for example, or a crowded elevator in 2014--- but only nodded. “Yes.”

“And you would agree that moving into your house on such a day would not be a good way to start out your life in a new place?”

Steve could only nod. “But I never felt as if I had much control over how my day began.”

Anathi grinned. “Here in Wakanda, we believe something other. The basic idea is that some days are better than others for certain tasks, and while most of us don’t follow all of the prescriptions, they’re known and understood as part of our cultural fabric, so to speak. You’re going to be living in a Wakandan house and so…” she trailed off delicately. “Would you like to learn the best day for you to move into your house?”

Steve rubbed the back of his neck. “I, um, haven’t even told my partner about this place yet.”

“Such beautiful blue eyes,” Anathi murmured. “It just figures. Very well, would you like to know the best day to tell him?”

“I was planning to tell him this afternoon,” Steve told her. 

She grinned. “Shuri, hand me that bowl over there, would you? Not the green one, the blue one, like his eyes.”

Shuri chuckled, but brought the bowl over. Steve watched as Anathi washed her hands, then filled the bowl with water. After a quick murmured prayer, she cast some herbs on the water and studied them carefully. Finally, she sat back with a satisfied look on her face. “Today is perfectly sufficient. This evening at sunset would be better.”

“And when should we…move in, if he likes it?”

“This weekend,” Anathi told him. She smiled. “Ramonda was right about you.”

“She was?” Steve asked. 

“Shuri and I have been friends since we were toddlers, since we fell climbing rocks and bled on each other. Ramonda could have given that property away several times over by now, but she held off, insisting that she would know when its proper guardians were here. Looks like she was right.”

“I don’t know what to say, ma’am,” Steve said, mystified.

“Then say nothing,” Anathi responded. “And accept.”

***

Bucky had had a bad night; bringing him to the property in the afternoon, just as he was drifting off to sleep, would have been disastrous. But by the early evening, he was awake, and had eaten and showered. “So you want to go for a walk?” Bucky asked, pulling on a t-shirt and an old pair of jeans.

Steve nodded. “It’s not far.”

Bucky shrugged. “Eh, why not?” 

Steve led him through the winding path leading up to the house, the path kept clear of debris. There were the unmistakable leopard tracks in the dirt but—this was Wakanda, and Steve supposed they’d learn to get used to that. “Shuri brought me up here this morning and I wanted you to see it.”

Bucky grunted. “Don’t know that I’m much looking forward to a hike right now…” The house came into view and Bucky stopped so suddenly that Steve ran into him. “Stevie, what did you do?” he murmured.

“Not a thing. Ramonda owns this house and the land and she wants to give it to us.”

“Just like that?” Bucky asked, skeptical. “The _Queen_ is giving us a house? What did you have to do?”

“I met with an astrologer,” Steve said solemnly, enjoying Bucky’s confusion. He held out his hand. “Come on. Let’s check the place out.”

“And it’s ours?” Bucky asked. “Ours?”

“Ours,” Steve reassured him. “If you want it.”

“Home,” Bucky murmured. “ _Ours._ Who’d have thought?”

Taking him by the hand, Steve led him into their home.


End file.
